


The Violinist - an essay on the book “Violin” by Anne Rice

by Floris_Oren



Category: Violin - Anne Rice
Genre: Anne Rice - Freeform, Essay, Gen, I haven't done one of those in forever, Or cursing, also possibly a book report, just horrible people doing horrible things, there isn't any sex, violin
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-15
Updated: 2017-04-15
Packaged: 2018-10-19 06:59:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,002
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10634679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Floris_Oren/pseuds/Floris_Oren
Summary: An Essay about the Book "Violin" a supernatural adventure by Anne Rice.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Sometimes a book can change your soul; sometimes a book can speak to you in ways no other book has. Sometimes a perfect book comes along which helps you through a hard time in your life.

Sometimes a book can change your soul; sometimes a book can speak to you in ways no other book has. Sometimes a perfect book comes along which helps you through a hard time in your life. Some people can read the thickest of books and expound on the themes to such an extent that other’s ears start to burn from the meaningless words. Sometimes, one can understand a book but not have the words to explain it to others. Not everyone understands Hamlet, or Romeo and Juliet. Not everyone gets the classic philosophers. 

 

Philosophy was great at a certain time, when people wore frilly shirts and didn’t have much to entertain them. So Libertines slept around, Bohemian’s made their art, lived a penniless life, and the rich did what the rich do. 

 

Sometimes, such things do not belong in this modern age; what use do we have of the old world finery, of such men who expounded again and again on the big bang, or some other scientific theory which attacks the religious as fools? 

 

Yet, here is a book which I hadn’t known existed. Read it in a day and a half. And while I admit there were times I skimmed the pages, to get to the juicy bits I must say that something must have touched Anne Rice’s soul in order for her to write such a thing. 

 

Now, don’t get me wrong, I am one of those fringe admirers of Rice’s. On the surface she looks great. She’s successful as all us writers want, wish and somehow become when the time is right. She’s written many books, some more popular than others, some better written than others. Which is normal for writers. If our soul isn’t into it is the story successful? 

 

Violin is one of those books that must have been a stroke of the most vaguest of ideas. And somehow a book of 21 chapters was brought out of it. And honestly, the backstory of the ghost Stefan was needed. Though I don’t know how the main character, Triana, could gain the power to play an instrument when she never before had the skill. 

 

I am not saying that such things cannot be learned. But also being of non-musical skill, I must look askance at this and question it. Writing is where my skills lie and while it would be wonderful to learn to play - I don’t think an evening going through the backstory of a ghost would give me such a talent. But, let’s suspend our disbelief and get past these introductory paragraphs and into the essay proper. 

 

Triana is just as horrible as Stefan. I was lying in bed this morning thinking about it, and indeed I was halfway through this book. Taking a break last night to watch a Resident Evil movie with my parents, I returned to the book this morning. Enraptured as I was yesterday with all the heady, flowery language. Which I think has somehow inspired the writing I am doing now as Anne Rice has always done. 

 

In fact, I’ve come to the conclusion that Anne Rice writes one of two people. She either writes people who are good and pure and you can never be mad at them, or people who are harsh and horrible. Katrinka is annoying, she gets better near the end but she is entirely too forgettable. I feel bad for Rosalind, but she’s a solid presence in the book even though she doesn’t have much to do. 

 

In fact, Violin is entirely too plotless. No one sets out to DO anything. Or BECOME anything. Triana starts this book out in grief. She spend two days with her dead husband, Karl, who has died from Aids. She bathes the body, lies with it in the same bed - before her kind neighbor comes over to see how she is doing. 

 

Stefan has shown up, playing for her. He’s trying to seduce her. And eventually we learn that he feeds off other people’s grief. Being betrayed by his own father and never having dealt with it and in true ghost fashion is too afraid to go into the light for fear of what lies beyond it. 

But I don’t have sympathy for either Stefan or Triana. In fact, I want to love Stefan and hold him in my arms, which I think is the point. Through his music he brings about pain and sorrow. Triana is slightly mad already so his intentions of driving her mad and seeping her grief into himself to make himself stronger on this physical plain doesn’t work….Entirely. 

 

By the way; this is NOT a romance. Not at all is it a romance. Stefan is not in love with Triana, and Triana is not in love with him. If anything she is in love with the music. From the start Rice paints a picture of Triana and her music. How she loves the Master’s. She plays Beethoven over and over as her husband lies dead in an upstairs back bedroom. 

 

And if that isn’t creepy, because honestly, I didn’t find it creepy. How she talks about Karl. Or how she takes care of the dead body, how she is slightly catatonic after her neighbor lady finds her and the family is called. Our first introductions to Katrinka and Rosalind, their husbands and missing Feye. 

 

Welp. We shall get back to her. 

 

Once you get past the flowery language you find out that Triana is just obsessed with death. She took care of her father until he died, her ex husband cheated on her while their child was dying from Cancer. She was drunk as a skunk during that time, not to mention her mother was also a drunk when she and her siblings were all children. Honestly, the domestic abuse in this book is slightly disturbing when you think about it. The father kicking the family out to clean house, his four daughters taking their mother to the park where some leering men show people their dicks and piss everywhere. The mother is drunk and wants to commit suicide. 

 

Yeah. it’s disturbing. 

 

Triana seems to think she killed her mother, her father, Lily and then Karl. There is a whole chapter where she madly goes on about the welcoming grip of death and dead bodies snuggling into each others. She….well…...she needs a psychiatrist and let’s just say Lecter would have a hay day with her. 

 

She also has a whole chapter dedicated to a dream while she lies with her dead husband. Which is technically a premonition of the ending of the book. So while at the time I felt it was un-needed, just a thing to fill space, it’s…..some type of foreshadowing that possibly helps the story? 

 

Soon enough, after her madness wanes and her Violin friend invites her - through the neighbor woman - to the church for a small concert, she goes. That when we find out his name is Stefan. This is after he’s stalked her at the window, and played for her, then was in her room which she slapped him a couple of times for being when she hadn’t invited him. 

 

Honestly, I kinda feel that she did? It’s hard to say. She never said so in words but from the start she welcomed his music, and in extension him and in supernatural terms that’s an invitation though an odd one. And yes, depending on who you are and what you believe these things change. 

 

Her making the sign of the Cross does nothing, but if you don’t actually believe in it, it doesn’t work. But that’s something for another time. Remember, Anne Rice was Catholic, and while this isn’t one of her Jesus Fan Fictions  - which pot calling kettle black, huh Mrs. Rice? - she mentions that Triana is Catholic, but it’s more or less a throw away line. Triana doesn’t actually practice it. 

 

Anyway. She and Stefan would have been lovers in another life. They are made for each other. Their hateful words are spoken without thought to how the other would or is or will feel. And they both have good points, but neither is really willing to listen to each other. 

 

Triana gets enraptured by the Violin which itself is a ghost because Stefan is a ghost and that’s how thing work in this world; he lets her touch it as he speaks to her. I forget what exactly he is saying, but it’s odd. Let’s just say that real life people would never speak such romantic things to each other. Only in Anne Rice books does this happen. 

 

And soon enough she seizes the violin up. She plays. Remember, she is not one of skill when it comes to music. She tried to play when she was younger but her family hated it and soon she gave it up. She plays on for pages and pages angsting over her family and so on and so forth and we find out that her drunk mother was abusive and she feels noble in all of this. 

 

Which was when I discovered that I dislike Triana. A lot. I feel she is just as rotten as her mother, but she comes off as such a nice person. But you know, sometimes you come across people like that. Who do “nice” things, but they are actually horrid people. And I mean horrid in her mediocrity. 

 

She isn’t special. She isn’t pretty - though the text says she is in an odd way, she’s a “bell shaped” woman with round features, long black hair and bangs, the dumb kind that were seriously popular in the 90’s - and whenever she talks about her family, I just….I can’t. I feel she’s proud of it, in their deaths and it sickens me. 

 

Stefan, to a point, is a more sympathetic character. He was rich, his family Russian - they served the Czar and all of that. He challenges his father for a different road in life, a life that meant he wouldn’t have to go into military service, because apparently that’s a thing; his father basically goes into a rage, canes his son - because Stefan wants to go off and be a vagabond Violinist. He wants an expensive as fuck violin that he saved from their burning house in Vienna - which yes we get in full romantic/flowery language because he’s trying to get the ghost instrument back from Triana who is being rather selfish. I mean, it doesn’t belong to her. 

 

She doesn't technically have ANY claim on it and yet she refuses to give it back and throughout all this backstory of Stefan’s she just finds that she is “right” in not giving it back because he drives people mad with his music. 

 

Or, let say, everyone who are weak enough to give into it. Can I say that everyone has their weak moments and a death of someone close is one of the most weakest anyone can be. And he takes advantage of that. 

 

So, instead of going to a priest, or a medium or someone who could help him cross over. She takes the ghost violin which becomes physical for a period of time, and she uses it to her own gratification. She doesn’t help anyone when she goes on her concerts. People are enthralled with the music she makes. Remember, as soon as she got hold of this violin she could play it perfectly. 

 

Oh, she magically ends up in modern day vienna once she gets Stefan to let go of her and she’s no longer in the ghostly world but her own, and she finds this nice hotel and this nice Count and she plays for him. Her family comes and her lawyer who can make out checks to the hotel. La-de-da. She’s been rich from the beginning. 

 

And no, I don’t mind it. Some people might and in that case I say put this book down. Most character’s in Anne Rice’s books are rich. But the rich family aren’t mean, and Triana gives her family a million dollars each. And Karl was very generous with money too. 

 

I do like that part, her mother in law in not a shrew either. We see her briefly. But that’s a good thing. Anyway. The end of the book is basically a European trip and then they go to Brazil where that dream sequence comes to life again in various ways and we see a palace she was being worshiped at; the dream sequence foreshadows her success because she won’t give the violin up to Stefan and in so doing she suddenly becomes a successful violinist and everyone is surprised. She played all over Europe, we get the major cities, and then in Brazil and then we find out Feye is alive. 

 

She left when Triana married Karl and never talked to her family for years and years until Triana became successful and then, there she is. But all we have about Feye is her family's perspective which is she is basically pure of heart and Triana felt that she pushed her sister away. 

 

I cannot say too much since that’s all we have on Feye and I’d honestly need another book about Feye to say if she was wrong or right in doing so. *shrugs* 

 

Through this part of the book we don’t have much interaction between Stefan, the Russian ghost, and Triana, a new musician. She’s fawned upon and she LOVES it. She acts all humble about it too and there is so much crying going on - not gonna lie, I did cry before chapter 5. There are a lot of tears in this book. 

 

But eventually Stefan leaves her a note, he is connected to the violin. And he is fading but how and why neither knows and it’s not important. But she goes to a place to meet him and that’s when we find out he’s scared and she has no sympathy for him, she just tells him to go and the violin goes with him. 

 

When she gets back to the hotel she is sharing with her family, they ask her to play for them because Feye is back. She has a different Violin taken out, explains she had given up the long strad, and she begins to play. 

 

I can only surmise that whatever talent Stefan had nurtured in life, that got attached to the violin when he was killed, and hence played by Triana wore off on her to some extent because all I can figure from the ending of the book is that she can still play and well. 

 

The ending is basically her playing to the street outside the Brazilian Hotel. It’s a short paragraph and as always through this book Anne Rice uses vivid words to describe the setting. Honestly, sometimes it’s tedious; more tedious than Tolkien and his pages upon pages of forest and elves and such. 

 

But, once you get past that language, you really do find people at their most basic. Triana isn’t good. She isn’t noble. She isn’t pure. She’s a spiteful, mean person who covers this all up in her musical poetry. Who simpers at people and only uses honesty when it most suits her. 

 

Stefan, while he is just as mean as her, did his best to show her why she shouldn’t take his violin from him. Even though his father bought it and sold it and it technically belonged to some Vienna Merchant, that Stefan tried to take it back and got killed for it. In death, I would say he has more rights to it than Triana ever had. 

 

Not to mention that stealing is wrong. I can understand Stefan’s need to steal it more than Triana’s. He is right when he calls her selfish. She is wholly WRONG in denying it and turning it back on him. Making him out to be the devil, to be wrong. 

 

He is. In many things, but not that. 

 

And yes, he does pass into the light. He is gone and that instrument with him, but Triana will remember and when she’s old she will write about it. This whole book is from her perspective and there’s a note from her in the beginning explaining her looks and that she’s old and this is her recollection. 

 

And in one hand it is different from The Vampire Lestat. Where we get it all from Lestat’s POV and none from the other people in his life. But I would say that Triana is the female version of Lestat. But where she isn’t a vampire and has no intentions to try and live forever, her basic desire in this book is herself. It’s hard to feel the love she had at all for Karl, or her family. She wallows in pride that is technically self pity. 

 

And she brings the reader along into all these basic desires that one has to fight off and smack a few times. I found myself looking aghast at the words and being disgusted most of the time. But, is that not how Stefan’s music works? And is that not the intention of this book? Triana hears his music and she welcomes it, because the intention of the music is what she feeds upon. The nobleness in helping the sickened of her family to death’s door and the aftermath. 

 

She feeds upon the attention of others though she doesn’t realize it, hardly do they. She says she must be the heroine of the book but she’s more or less just as needy a specter as Stefan. Who indeed passes over in the end and good riddance. I say. 

 

I could go on. But I won’t. Instead I shall leave you hear with this essa no one asked for, with all my wound up thoughts. Hopefully somewhat elegantly put. I hope. At least. And if not. Well. That’s a failure on my part as the writer. 

 

End

April 15, 2017 - Colorado

 


End file.
